#israeli supreme court

[secular-jew]

What the Battle Over Judicial Reform in Israel Is Really About

By CAROLINE GLICK

Any complex issue deserves (no, requires) lengthy argument, and this piece by Caroline Glick this is no exception. But Caroline is a cogent writer who makes everyone smarter. So read it and get properly informed.

***************************************

In Israel as in states throughout the Western world, the political Left is an ecosystem of power, and not merely a political camp. It starts with the parties of the center- and far-Left. But it encompasses far more powerful institutions and actors, as well. These include the universities, the vast majority of media organs, most of the entertainment industry, and much of the economic elite. The Left also comprises the senior ranks of the security establishment—represented most clearly by politically active retired generals.

The most powerful component of the Left's ecosystem in Israel is the legal fraternity, which is comprised of the Supreme Court, the attorney general, the state prosecution, and the legal advisors to the Knesset and the government ministries.

Despite its control over vast power sources in Israeli society, the Left does not control the Israeli people themselves. A significant majority of Israelis define themselves as right-of-center. In the last elections, right-of-center parties won 64 seats in Israel's 120-seat parliament, the Knesset. The Left's parties won a mere 46 seats. The other 10 seats went to two anti-Zionist Arab parties, which are supported by, but are not constituent parts of, the leftist ecosystem.

For the first three decades after Israel won independence in 1948, the Left held all levers of political power. The Labor Party controlled the government and the Knesset. And its loyalists controlled the Left's nonpolitical ecosystem. When, under Menachem Begin, the Right won its first electoral victory in 1977, Begin disappointed his loyalists and opted not to replace Labor's apparatchiks in the public sector, the Israel Defense Forces, the legal system, and state media with his own. Begin's refusal to bring in his own people was a source of rancor, but when viewed in its historical context, his decision had its merits. Labor's apparatchiks were old-left socialists, ideologically, but they were experienced in the ways of governance and they were patriots. True, they despised Begin, but they loved Israel. Leaving them secure in their positions may have made them political thorns in Begin's side, but it didn't harm the national interest.

Begin would probably have acted differently today.

Like the Left throughout the Western world, over the past 30 years, Israel's Left has abandoned labor union politics for cultural Marxism and post-nationalism. Its new globalist ideals render the Left's constituent parts contemptuous, and increasingly hateful, of Israel's nationalist majority.

In the decades since Begin opted to leave the Labor apparatchiks in place, their post-nationalist successors have formed an oligarchy whose power sits beyond the reach of the elected Israeli government. Its members, particularly in the legal fraternity, have seized more and more executive powers away from the government, and more and more legislative powers away from the Knesset. For the past three decades, government lawyers have killed government decisions and legislative initiatives, before they were off the drawing board, by proclaiming them "unreasonable" or "legally problematic" (as opposed to illegal).

When the government and Knesset chose to disregard the unsubtle orders from their unelected lawyers, the Supreme Court pounced. The justices haven't flinched from abrogating the government's actions; and more often than not, the justices have based their decisions not on statutory law, but on the extraordinarily vague "reasonableness" rationale that has enabled them to strike down laws and lawful government actions simply by deeming them "unreasonable."

Today, led quite openly by Israeli Supreme Court Chief Justice Esther Hayut and her predecessor, Aharon Barak, the Israeli Left is in open rebellion against the Netanyahu government and its plans to reform the judicial system. Buffeted and sometimes led by a media that has abandoned all pretense of dispassionate journalism for propaganda, some on the Left—including the mayor of Tel Aviv—have outright called for civil war. Others have deployed a combination of riots, protests, boycotts, highway blockages, and lawfare in a bid to paralyze and intimidate the Netanyahu government into standing down.

The Netanyahu government's program for judicial reform is astounding for its modesty. If passed in full, it will simply realign Israel's currently unchecked judiciary with the checked judiciaries of the vast majority of Western democracies.

The judicial reform package's main components are: placing judicial appointments under more political control; requiring justices to base their judgments on the law, rather than the malleable veneer of "reasonableness"; banning the Supreme Court from amending or overriding Israel's Basic laws, which form the basis of Israel's quasi-constitutional rule of law; and placing constraints on the Supreme Court's power to abrogate laws duly promulgated by the Knesset, while providing the Knesset with a mechanism for overriding the Court's decisions.

The final clause of the government's reform package stipulates that the attorney general's opinions do not bind the government that he ostensibly serves.

While the Left has managed to engender a sense of chaos, the situation in Israel is actually far more stable than it appears. The Left's riots will continue so long as the billionaire funders in Israel and abroad send their checks. But the legal reform will be passed into law and implemented.

Any doubt that this would occur was dispelled two weeks ago, via a strategic intervention by Israeli President Isaac Herzog. Although the position of Israeli president is a largely ceremonial post, two weeks ago Herzog inserted himself into the middle of the debate. In a primetime address, Herzog set out his own proposal for judicial reform. A former head of the Labor Party and the son of Israel's sixth president, the late Chaim Herzog, Isaac Herzog is a scion of the leftist establishment.

Herzog's proposal involved fewer limits on the Court's powers than the government's proposal. But his intervention was important—indeed, it was decisive—for three main reasons.

First, Herzog's proposal is predicated on both recognition and opposition to the fact that today, Israel's Supreme Court has no checks on its power whatsoever. To restore and safeguard Israel's democracy, the Israeli Supreme Court must cease to operate as a self-perpetuating judicial oligarchy.

Second, Herzog's proposal recognizes the fundamental legitimacy of the political Right. Knesset opposition leader Yair Lapid and his partners have so far refused to follow suit; as far as they are concerned, the Israeli people's vote last fall to restore Netanyahu to power was no more than an arbitrary moment, and far less legitimate than the unmoving positions of the nation's ruling elite.

Finally, Herzog's intervention gave cover to leftist politicians and luminaries who, like him, are willing to work with the Netanyahu government to reach a workable compromise on legal reform. Despite public denials by various opposition politicians, following Herzog's speech, prominent leftists have been meeting behind the scenes with Justice Minister Yariv Levin, Chairman of Knesset Law, Constitution, and Justice Committee Simcha Rothman, and their advisors, in order to bridge differences.

And those differences are not all that large. Nearly every single leading politician on the Left—including Lapid himself—has put forward a program of judicial reform similar to the Netanyahu government's plan. Back in 1994, Herzog's father, then-President Chaim Herzog, also called for constraining judicial power.

At the end of the day, the fight over judicial reform in Israel isn't about judicial reform at all. It is about the radical Left, and its refusal to accept the validity of democratic outcomes when its side loses. The Netanyahu government will win because, despite the fact that the radicals have taken over the leftist ecosystem, enough old-left Zionists are still around to work with their counterparts on the Zionist Right and cut a deal.

Caroline B. Glick is a Newsweek columnist, the senior contributing editor of Jewish News Syndicate, and the diplomatic commentator for Israel's Channel 14. She is also the author of The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East, (Crown Forum, 2014). From 1994 to 1996, she served as a core member of Israel's negotiating team with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

[dchan87]

SUCK IT, BIBI

[archaalen]

Israel's military must enlist the ultra-Orthodox. What will that mean for Netanyahu and the war?

[qupritsuvwix]

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/tens-thousands-rally-against-netanyahu-government-jerusalem-2024-03-31/

[itsnothingofinterest]

I’m not gonna lie. I feel pretty sick after seeing the election results. I’m not even American but I’ve always known the ramifications of Trump being in office even outside of his country. If this really isn’t a red mirage, and it’s sadly looking like it’s not, so many people in & outside the US are now in danger that it makes me feel like I’ll throw up.

Women.

Queer people.

Pretty much any racial minority in America.

The environment and effectively the world itself.

Of course we can’t forget Ukraine and Palestine; Putin will soon be allied with the strongest military in the world and getting israel to agree to a ceasefire is looking like a pipe dream. I’ve no doubt the situation in Gaza will get much worse in fact.

Oh and don’t get me started on how he’ll impact the Supreme Court that’ll ingrain all of this for long past his presidency and likely make it much more difficult to get another democrat in office again.

And still more groups he can hurt & areas of life he can screw over for everyone that I don't have it in me to remember right now.

I know defeatism and doomerism doesn’t help, perhaps I'm even being selfish ranting out stuff no one needs to hear right now like this; but as a non-American I’m already feeling pretty powerless. With a red mirage looking unlikely, it feels like our only hope is that Trump’s still too incompetent to be as intentionally bad as he wants to be. A pale silver lining to put bluntly.

…Fuck, it’s like all that stress from 2016 to 2020 is back in full, and it makes me realize just how much we took Biden and Harris for granted. These past 4 years of small improvements & things looking up were honestly nice. I’m going to miss them.

[pumpacti0n]

Reading the room

"A prevailing sentiment is that now is not the time to criticize Biden because SCOTUS & the Heritage Foundation have declared war on the left & Project 2025 - the White male Christian Evangelist mission - which was, in part, tested on a few African regimes in exchange for "aid" - is finally coming home to roost, so "vote blue no matter who!"

We should seemingly ignore every lie, every 2000 lb. bomb, every weapon shipment, and the literal piles of dead & obliterated bodies we've seen every day for the past nine months because if we criticize Biden or point out the Dem party's complicity in genocide, it will complicate what we must defend against in November.

Nevermind the illegal settlements and land grabs in the West Bank, the torture and abuse of Palestinian hostages, nevermind the under-counted death toll, the expanding war, the disdain for international law, the ceasefire ploys to continue the genocide, the lies direct from the president's mouth, nevermind the added funds that Biden and democratic mayors across the country are giving to militarize the police and build Cop Cities because November is just around the corner.

Now is not the time to point out what Dr. King, Assata Shakur, Malcolm X, Kwame Ture and so many of our revered elders have told us about "liberals", or to bring up Fannie Lou Hamer's "Nobody is free until everybody is free", or to point out that Biden is opposed to expanding the court, or that the Dem Party elite endorsed candidates to run against Black progressives that called for a ceasefire, or that actual climate defenders have abandoned Biden, or that he has "green-lit" more oil drilling than his right-wing predecessor...

The prevailing sentiment is that we should forgo any leverage we may have as voters, that this is no time to demand more from our handlers, we should let them kill or exploit as many Palestinians, Congolese, Haitians, South & Central Americans and Asians as they want because we got an election coming up in November and if we don't ignore what these same blue folks are doing in our names outside of the country and vote blue, the red ones are gonna take away our rights at home.

Now is not the time to educate voters on the Dem Party's center right policies or to point out how a coalition of progressive 3rd party candidates could carve a path for citizens to actually achieve the policies they dream of and break the corporate hegemony, or to point out how a mass social movement, already underway, could be mobilized to force the power out of the hands of those who hold it over our heads, pointing to what we should fear from the other side, while making zero concessions to our demands.

Now is not the time to make demands or correlations between the fight against the gender binary & the readily accepted political party binary. Now is not the time to educate, push, or think, now is the time to fear!

Now is not the time to point out that Black Americans comprise 25% of the world's prison population and that the policies that imprisoned them were drawn up by Biden and imposed by Clinton. Now is not the time to bring up the Clinton's involvement in Haiti, or Obama's war crimes in the Middle East. Now is not the time to bring up the Middle East or America's imperial agenda readily endorsed by both parties or to acknowledge it as part of white supremacist ideology.

Now is not the time to learn any lessons from the "mask-off" moment that would align anti-Zionism with antisemitism, or to question the US military's role as the world's largest fossil fuel consumer, or to question what game the Biden administration is playing with Israeli billionaires to facilitate greater mineral extraction in the Congo. Now is not the time to think globally or to connect the dots between what its imposed on the global majority for our so-called comforts at home.

Now is not the time to understand what LandBack means in relation to climate, colonialism, genocide or to make any amends, right any wrongs, redirect our agendas, beat down corporate or foreign lobbies...No, no, no! Now is the time to fear.

Now is not the time to hear how you sound, to point out how you got got, to remind you that you could actually transform society if you decided to hold a meeting tonight, to call your friends and family, to organize, create think tanks, food banks, community policing organizations* that force out the men in blue (the silent partners in your ..."no matter who" slogans).

Now is not the time to point out that the bloodbath you're avoiding is already overflowing with blood, that your self-centered focus is exactly what the bloodthirsty expect from you so that they can carry on with business as usual, or that you've allowed fear to diminish your concerns to the point of voting for business as usual."

[source]

[totallynotcensorship]

tags update: US politics is 5th on trending. with supreme court, scotus, and kosa trending under it. also "kids online safety act" is trending

edit: non of them are front page anymore... still trending tho

reason? kosa has been introduced in the house of representatives, a closer step towards becoming constitutional

Tl;dr on kosa(go read eff or watch sog for more details)

the "kids online safety act" is a bill in the US senate by senators richard bulmenthal and marsha blackburn originally introduced in feb 2022 with the goal of "protecting kids from dangerous or harmful content online", enabling local state attorney generals the power to enforce it. except the "duty to care" which is handled by the federal trade commission as of feb 2024

the bill is, at core, an act of censorship forced through even more invasive spyware. the vague language used in the bill enables wide scale censorship up to the wimps of state attorney generals and the FTC. subjects that are potentially under rest of censorship include suicide, eating disorders, self harm, substance abuse, bullying, violence, sexuality, sex ed, mental health, ect.

censorship of such subjects doesn't solve those issues

they only limit accessibility to useful resources for people suffering from mental illness, experiencing suicidal thoughts, addicts, people looking for info on sex-ed(that their school should have provided), transgender people struggling with gender diaspora, lgbt people, people belonging to minority groups trying to look up or spread awareness of their history and prosecution, online activists and educators trying to do their job(you know.. the kind of thing we are trying to do here concerning an on going ethnic cleansing). the "it is for the kids" excuse is bullshit

this is bad even to non americans?

sense most of the big social media sites we uses, like tumblr for example, are US based they will be affected by the bill. and if this bill is based it could work as an example for other countries to introduce similar bills. if you want to help go to stopkosa or badinternetbills. and send a complaint through them

DON'T STOP TALKING ABOUT INJUSTICE

[perrysoup]

“You’re becoming a one issue voter”

Bitch how is “stop supporting and funding genocide” a single issue?

- funding terrorism

- arresting protestors (Biden isn’t stopping states and silence is agreement)

- silencing free speech

I think those are 3 super fucking important things

And regarding specific policies that politicians make “oh but they don’t have control of X” those promises weren’t made with that exemption. “Elect me and I’ll do X” is not “if I have complete control”. Presidential orders can be done outside of congress. “Oh but they can be removed by the next guy” and that’s a problem with the next guy.

Why the fuck is the solution “it could be reversed so we can’t do it” and not “I’ll do it and my opponent can’t deal with explaining how to justify reversing it”

Also, that’s EVERY FUCKING LAW AND JUDGEMENT!

The USSC they don’t give a fuck about precedent, so just fucking do the stuff and let the people force politicians to try rip it from our fucking hands

Your complacency is disgusting, and your feeling that somehow you don’t deserve more is saddening.

[sendmyresignation]

been reading about life sentences and prison abolition a lot lately (mostly visa-vi children who become lifers and the laws which allow children to be tried as adults) and its crazy how "tough on crime" politicians can't use the superpredator rhetoic anymore so they'll take One Guy and turn that person into a boogeyman which makes it impossible to enact meaningful change like. the way oregon used to have some of the most strict mandatory minimums for juvi offenders as young as 15 (which goes hand in hand with the history of oregon/northwestern exclusion of black residents and the intrinsic antiblackness in the area) and reforming this took literal decades bc politicians could fear monger about the thurston high school shooter getting out of prison (after passing a bill that prevented sentencing minors to life without parole they added an addendum which excluded anyone sentenced before 2019- trapping hundreds of others into an endless sentence just for this one imfamous prisoner) like you have to destroy the notion that One Singular Person is Evil Enough to require the human rights abuses which allow 15 year olds to basically be thrown away forever like sorry if that is the case it doesn't work!!!!

[agentfascinateur]

"... history will remember Netanyahu as the man who served the interests of Israel’s enemies by tearing the country into bitterly opposed camps. Instead of seeking common ground and trying to bring the people together, he pushed ahead with a plan that undermined the country’s democratic foundations."

When a leader puts his self-interest ahead of the popular will, just to stay out of jail. ..

[kick-a-long]

sorry for the long post but ...

well considering how much republicans were amplifying and repeating various antisemitic conspiracy theories i would say that they are not unlike the nazis. the great replacement is one to one with hitlers theory that jews were the puppeteers and funders of queer and poc and immigrant rights movements. that they were coming to "replace" aryan germans or in america's case "true patriotic americans." (aryan is confusing because it's referring to south and east asian groups?)

nazis also resented groups they deemed "weak" or "deformed" like the disabled and the mentally ill. things that republicans outright complain about (at least since the 80s with wellfare queens and refusing to support obamacare universal payer healthcare. as well as dismantling socialized mental health care in the 70s which ..just... thanks again Ron Reagan gov of california in the 60s and 70s for all the serial killers that ran around unchecked.) the nazis used wealthy jewish elites as the excuse but notice how republicans use the dog whistle "wealthy democratic elites" or "wealthy globalists" the second one including the "rootless cosmopolitan" antisemetic theory, but cosmopolitan as a phrase meant lived in the city as well as being educated. sound familiar to the snobby blue cities the conservatives are mad at?

now this is nazis before hitler came to power, about mid 1920? to at least 1930s.

jews were the main target but they were also used to explain how "inferior" races were becoming successful and also why the economic collapse was not the fault of the wealthy generally but a handful of spoiled richy riches who were too decadent and using minority groups as pawns. you know... the (((jews)))

in my opinion, knowing the factors that lead up to the holocaust, the only difference between america and germany (in the retoric being thrown around at least) is that because we have religious freedom in the US as our first and highest principle of law it's basically legally impossible to target jews for being jewish. they would have to figure out ways to target jews, a varied group who don't share the same types of last names and who have to voluntarily register themselves as jews, without identifying jews or infringing on their religion. germany had no problems saying jews couldn't be students or teachers or saying they had to live in restricted areas and wear identifying cloths. america can't pass laws like that. unless you look at "constitutional originalism" which all the conservatives on the supreme court use, which could easily be used to say "the framers of the constitution only meant freedom of religion for the different kinds of christians which were around at the time of the framing is 1776." which is bunk because there were lots of different religions in america even in 1776, like say native religions as well as jews and everything else.

this is why legislative racial/queer discrimination in america is much more common. you can target black communities and hispanic communities and lgbt communities and urban communities much more easily by backdooring laws that target things they share as a community including where they live and their lifestyle. it is easier to hire cops and direct school funding away from and halt community investment in... communities of color and sexual/gender minorities.

all this to say... that while the republicans do mirror nazi beliefs that jews and jewish ideologies (cultural tolerance, letting people do their own thing, be open to immigration, humanistic and ethical response to communities in crisis especially if those communities are allowed to self determine, and free discussion of ideas/ varying opinions) are being weaponized by a shadowy cabal of jews and jewish allies. they very very obviously do. they are not full hitler WW2 nazis at this time.

the holocaust was the final act and goal of nazi ideology. after every last jew was dead they would have planned to cull any "jewish like" groups. they probably would have ended up enslaving more than half the population. by enslaving i mean literally worked them to death with no food, shelter, or life outside of generating the ever increasing amount of money they would need to sustain themselves. any dark haired men and women. anyone with the wrong skull shape. eugenics is a cess pit, a pyramid scheme of sorts, that only ends when enough people next in line to be culled say no. my personal favorite factoid about the eugenics movement in America (around the late 1800s) is that eugenists estimated there were only about 4% of the total us population that was good enough to breed.

America isn't going the way of the nazis as long as the first amendment holds and as long as there is "strict scrutiny" of racial bias and "scrutiny" of sexual bias. it's important to note however, that one of our supreme court justice is flying a christian nationalism flag outside more than one of his houses. you know christian nationalism? the one that wants to make america a "christian" state where christian religious laws are held above any others and ideally the country would exist as a christian ethnostate? convert or perish kind of thing.

so that said. yeah. republicans are very much aspiring nazis.

don't worry tho. the left in America is aspiring to become stalinists and moaists so they can fix the country just like the ussr and the moa fixed russia and china to have utopian societies where everyone can speak their minds and is taken care of by the government and has political determination and can be gay or a different ethnicity or feel safe in their free government provided housing.

and they also hate jews.

it's going to be fine because there are divided regions that can go their own way and keep their laws of the land as crazy or sane as they like. plus all of this would take more years to put into motion than the orange shit head has left on earth. IMO

I am taking the word "nazi" away from goyim until they realise JEWS CANNOT BE FUCKING NAZIS.

Not all fascist white guys™️ are nazis!!!! Stop claiming our oppression as your own!!!!!!!!!

Trump is not a nazi. Desantis is not a nazi. Whoever the fuck else on that category is not a nazi. Nazis are people that went after mainly and mostly JEWS. Republican/conservative/whatever DOES NOT EQUAL NAZI!!!!!!!!!!!

Whether or not you agree with zionism, ZIONISTS. CANNOT. BE. NAZIS.

Because of the simple fact they are jews.

And the nazis? They went AFTER JEWS. Before anyone else.

Unless you also wanna start calling Black People You Don't Like KKK members, fucking stop.

[soon-palestine]

Hostages tortured to death. Parents executed in front of their children. Doctors beaten. Babies murdered. Sexual assault weaponised. No, not Hamas crimes. This is part of an ever-growing list of documented atrocities committed by Israel in the five months since 7 October – quite separate from the carpet bombing of 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza and a famine induced by Israel’s obstruction of aid. And yet while the western establishment media has been chock full of the most lurid allegations of savagery directed against Hamas, sometimes with little or no supporting evidence, Israeli atrocities are excused or quickly forgotten. Accusations against Hamas are endlessly reheated to paint a picture of a supremely dangerous and bestial militant group, in turn rationalising the slaughter and starvation of Gaza’s population to “eradicate” it as a terrorist organisation. But equally barbarous atrocities committed by Israel – not in the heat of battle, but in cold blood – are treated as unfortunate, isolated incidents that cannot be connected, that paint no picture, that reveal nothing of import about the military that carried them out. If Hamas’ crimes were so savage and sadistic they still need to be reported months after they took place, why does the establishment media never feel the need to express equal horror and indignation at equivalent or worse acts of cruelty and sadism being inflicted by Israel on Gaza – not five months ago, but right now? Israel's torture of doctors, its sexual assaults of Palestinian women, it's leaving premature babies to die after its forces stormed a hospital. Where is the outrage? This is part of a pattern of behaviour by the western media that leads to only one possible deduction: Israel’s five-month-long attack on Gaza is not being reported. Rather, it is being selectively narrated – and for the most obscene of purposes. Through consistent and glaring failures in their coverage, establishment media – including supposedly liberal outlets, from the BBC and CNN to the Guardian and New York Times – have smoothed the way for Israel to carry out mass slaughter in Gaza, what the World Court has assessed as plausibly a genocide. The role of the media has not been to keep us, their audiences, informed about one of the greatest crimes in living memory. It has been to buy time for US President Joe Biden to keep arming his most useful of client states in the oil-rich Middle East, and to do so without damaging his prospects for re-election in November’s US presidential vote. If Russian President Vladimir Putin was a madman and a barbarous war criminal for invading Ukraine, as every western media outlet agrees, what does that make Israeli officials, when every one of them supports far worse atrocities in Gaza, directed overwhelmingly at civilians? And more to the point, what does that make Biden and the US political class for materially backing Israel to the hilt: sending bombs, vetoing demands for a ceasefire at the United Nations, and freezing desperately needed aid? Worrying about the optics, the president expresses his discomfort, but he carries on helping Israel regardless. While western politicians and commentators worry about some imaginary existential threat those brief events of five months ago pose to the nuclear-armed state of Israel, Israel is quite literally wiping Gaza off the map day by day, quite undisturbed.

[nando161mando]

Have you noticed this too 🤔

[silicacid]

Israel blows up Gaza's "Palace of Justice" compound which housed the Palestinian Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal, the Court of First Instance & the Magistrate. 100,000s of vital case documents are gone. Deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure is a War Crime!

Israel's soldiers took victory images inside the Palestinian Supreme Court before blowing it up into pieces. This proves the facility constituted ZERO danger to the Israeli military & no militants were hiding inside it at the time it was destroyed. Again, a war crime!

[chongoblog]

Hey all my fellow Americans.

Vote.

Like, seriously, if you can, vote.

Preferably for Kamala.

“But Kamala is really bad”. Yes she is, and I can guarantee you that the alternative is going to be worse. Trump is literally running “Mass Deportation Now” as a slogan and saying that immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country with him and his VP knowingly spreading false rumors that Haitian are eating people's dogs and cats. And he’ll probably appoint even more religious zealots onto our Supreme Court who will last quite a long time.

“I’m sick of picking the lesser of two evils. She should EARN my vote” I agree. And in a just world she would have to do that. But of the two parties, one is FAR more likely to implement policies that will make it so she has to like Ranked Choice Voting.

“So you’re saying to support genocide?” Voting is not advocating for a candidate’s policies. ESPECIALLY in the dogshit political hellscape we live in.

"Voting for a Democrat isn't going to make the changes that need to be made." You're right again! Voting alone isn't going to make those changes. But between the two parties, I think one of them is going to be easier to organize under, and it isn't the one who said that cops should shoot protestors during the BLM protests.

"After all Biden's done with no promise of Israeli divestment from Harris, I simply can't bring myself to make that vote" And I understand that. The issue is that there just isn't a good choice available for that front, especially if you believe that Kamala and Walz can't be bullied. So you have to make the decision based on every other front. And whether it be the economy, rights for immigrants, rights for LGBTQ people, rights for women, foreign policy, or plenty of other issues, the orange man's platform is LEAGUES worse.

So I ask you, if you are able to, vote. It might suck, but at this point in time, it's something we can do.